


something old, something new

by gaytimetraveller



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: and maybe some others but ;)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 07:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19168867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaytimetraveller/pseuds/gaytimetraveller
Summary: Something had changed since Sora had gone, that much they were sure of. (Or, everyone tries to cope while the future looms overhead.)





	something old, something new

**Author's Note:**

> mmmmmmmmmm this has been sitting in my google drive for like. a solid week. im wholly unsure of if this is actually good or if im just extremely back on my bullshit but i gotta throw this out before square's e3 conference today. also formatting may or may not be a little wonky ghghgh

Something had changed since Sora had gone, that much they were sure of. In some small, yet no less significant way; it was like a shift in the wind, and a new set of eyes. As if somewhere, somehow, something had clicked into place in his absence. And they could all feel it.

 

For Ventus, it was the feeling of fluttering heartbeat. The ghost of a smile that sent him racing, reeling, restless, buzzing from head to toe and yet almost wanting to crawl out of his own skin. It wasn’t just butterflies in his stomach, it was butterflies everywhere, uncomfortable and exciting to a nauseating point. Like the promise of change on the horizon, something he wasn’t sure if he feared or anticipated.

It was broken pieces sliding back into place, filling voids he hadn’t known he had.

There was a new light too, vague and unsure, but one like the sun on his face. He could smile, he could sigh, he could stare into the distance and have everyone giggling and saying he looked like a lovelorn fool.

He couldn’t explain how that wasn’t what it was, or at least he didn’t think that’s what it was, it was just this sense of _rightness_ among all the wrongs, and the knowing that somewhere, somehow, something _good_ was returning to the world. And that was sorely needed. It left him bouncing on his feet, excited and afraid, breathlessly exhilarated in the simplest way. His heart could’ve burst from the feeling.

Some nights, he saw that light in his dreams, the same one he was sure. It was something old and comforting, and he could’ve cried, still unsure if it was joy or despair at finally having been caught. But still, given the chance, he would cling onto it with everything he had. It was far better than the other feelings, than the grief, than the despair, than the knowings and omens and scrubbed away nightmares that warned him of the darkness that loomed overhead. With this, he could feel the light, steadier every day, hanging somewhere far in front of him, even if it felt like something old rather than new.

In some way, it was the past he ran from and the future he feared. The light he sought and the darkness he still needed to survive, but no; no the darkness coming for them wasn’t anything anyone needed to survive, it was much deeper and darker than that. He could tell that much, he knew that much. It was somehow familiar, and he didn’t like that either.

Some days, he frowned as he watched the sun rise, and some days he grinned, head in the clouds and restlessly waiting. He couldn’t help that the smiles that pulled at him more and more often as the days passed. Even as unease and discomfort and dread crawled under his skin, knowing that nothing was over, it had never been over, he really couldn’t help it.

It felt as if somehow that far-off light was coming closer, and he prayed it would find him first.

 

For Vanitas, he felt heartsick. He could _feel_ how over the moon Ventus was, brimming with some breathless anticipation, and he didn’t understand.

He felt like somewhere out there, there was some connection pulling on his heart. A connection he knew he shouldn’t have; it wasn’t like he’d ever had many, he could count them on one hand. It made him feel sick. It was unpleasant, feeling as if his heart had been bound in some invisible rope, jerked around in his ribcage with its unpredictable whims. It was coiled too tightly for him to break free, no matter how much he struggled. In fact, it almost seemed to get worse when he pulled away further, as if someone was scolding him for trying. He didn’t understand what it wanted, didn’t understand what it was trying to tell him, and if he ever did he would never admit it out of sheer stubbornness.

He could’ve cried, he could’ve screamed. He could’ve ripped the still-beating half-heart out of his chest just for it to stop.

It was pain, but it wasn’t. Not the kind of pain Vanitas was used to, not the kind he could handle with an expertise few others had. It was heartsickness. It was a secondhand feeling that left his stomach rolling. It was a pining for something he didn’t know, and when he dared try to remember what it could be, pieces of what had been shattered shifted and moved, sparking a wave of nausea every time another clicked into place.

But…it was also hope, an emotion so unfamiliar to him, so long-abandoned, it left him just as sick. When he felt the light creeping closer, a light not his own, even as he fell apart at it’s forgiving feet, knowing it hurt him, it would always hurt him, he was darkness and it was no longer his, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out, like a moth to a flame.

And he always got burned.

As he wandered the wastes of the Graveyard yet again, pulled there by the same whims that rattled his heart around in it’s cage, he wailed his lungs out, wishing it would stop. But there was no one around. Never was.

The harsh light and deeper shadows were the only shelter when he finally fell to his knees, wishing the past would just catch up with him before the future made the choice for them.

He could feel the darkness creeping in, just as much as his twin could, but maybe with more precision. It was old, it was deep, and it was like no darkness he had ever seen with these eyes, or at least nothing he could remember. It waited, patient almost, as if knowing it’s time would come no matter what was done.

In the moments he came closest to some shred of the truth, some piece of remembrance, it felt like half-familiar fingers around his throat, darkness creeping in, and morning was a reprieve with no relief as the light pulled him in again.

He dug his fingers into his chest, and wondered, was this really what _it_ felt like?

 

For Roxas, it was somewhere in the awful space between a distant familiarity and a fresh betrayal. Since Sora had gone, since he had left, since he had _disappeared as if there was no trace of him left_ , there had been an empty space; both in his heart and out of it. The universe seemed…empty, somehow. Like the mere absence of one boy could cause a vacuum greater than anything Roxas could think of.

Even the sky felt emptier. The stars seemed dimmer, even if they weren’t blinking out these days, it almost felt like they were fading away from him.

It wasn’t even necessarily sadness, the overwhelming kind everyone seemed so worried about when it came to him, always worried about poor Roxas and his missing somebody. Rather, it was more of a deep-seated melancholy, or maybe a bitterness. Not really a feeling, but the absence of one, or the vague after-image that left a sour taste in his mouth.

Then, one day, the stars started to shine brighter again. A piece of the universe returned, but not his, never his, nothing close to what he had wished for. He wanted to say there was no comfort in this foreign returned light, no consolation in what shone down on him, in what he felt from the others. He wanted to be angry, to be resentful, he had been _betrayed_ , this was betrayal and replacement from the universe itself. And yet, somehow, he couldn’t muster the kind of anger he tried to call upon.

See, anger had on occasion been a motivator for Roxas. A driving force to kick him into action, even if unreasonable. He wanted to not just be angry, but to be furious, frantic, fierce, to be livid in the way that propelled him to his feet, to go out and do _something_. But he couldn’t summon more than weary bitterness and betrayal, something far more slow burning than his usual flash-fire.

And then, of course, there was the begrudging comfort. An unnameable familiarity and ease he could easily blame on the others. Roxas knew as well as anyone that they’d all been out of sorts, hell, Ventus had been downright moony lately, and Xion seemed shaken somehow. And it was easy to shift blame, easier than accepting that this conflicting feeling he didn’t want could be his own.

For so much of his tenuous existence, his feelings hadn’t always been his own, instead imposed on him by others. He didn’t know how to take this, how these feelings that felt a degree removed from how he wanted to feel could still be his.

 

For Xion, it was uneasy. She saw the others in their grief, their weariness, in their resentment, in their hope, and as much as she cried independence now that she had her chance, she couldn’t help but to pick them up into her own catalogue. But, there was one thing she could perhaps call her own; not borrowed or copied in her fumbling attempts to grieve when she had never learned, and maybe it was even something unique. And that? Was a lingering uneasiness.

She couldn’t pinpoint the source, or the reason, couldn’t really see why. It was more of a perpetual vague nausea, the distant notion that she should be upset about something, that something was about to go horribly wrong, or already had.

There were nightmares of things that weren’t her own; hands grabbing, hands reaching. Something that would come, stealing them all away into the shadows before any light could catch up.

Other small things were there too, like a pain in her chest, as if Sora or another was calling, maybe not even to her but to someone connected. Maybe two of those connected trying to reach out to each other? She couldn’t tell. There were all the things she knew were from the others too, like a sigh on a twilight evening, a bitter aftertaste, a childish pettiness and defiance.

She didn’t try to understand too much of it, not until the day she had been called over by wide-eyes and shaking hands grasping her own in the confines of a dream. Things whispered in her ear, reverent and secret; of passed on memories, of that which lingered, of the fact that neither of their existences were as simple as they seemed and of the ties that bound them further than they knew.

And maybe she still didn’t quite understand, but she knew now that not all of this grief was her own. The grief over Sora, her brother, maybe the first thing she had ever known, that was hers, it was hers and not to belong to anyone else. But so much of the unease, the vague guilt, nausea, and paranoia, the sickness that lingered like bile in the back of her throat, that was never hers.

She started to pick up other things over time too, brief glimpses of memories and feelings not her own, and not from those she was so closely bound to. They weren’t nearly as strong, but she held onto them, as if they would help somehow. There was further guilt, remorse, the unwavering feeling that someone had been wronged, and flashes of memory enough to know that it had been by their hand. Then from another; confusion, anger, disillusionment, an unfamiliar familiarity. Betrayal. Trust. Loss. A willingness to accept something long-lost with open arms, a wish to shun it with closed doors. And then the fear, fear, _fear_ ; of the past, of the present, of the future, of something bigger than anything they had ever witnessed.

What was most haunting to her was knowing; knowing that even if these things weren’t hers, that didn’t mean not to trust them as one would trust a gut feeling. That only left her more uneasy, of whatever was to come.

At least, there was still some shard of hope, one she held close to her chest as if it would be stolen away if any was given the chance. And which one of them did it belong to? Well, there was no one really to say.

 

And for Naminé, there was only a smooth ease of familiarity. She may not have had all the pieces for herself, but there was a deeper sense of knowing, of what was right and wrong, of what had passed and what was to come, and her role in such things.

She watched the others, as if looking down at some great puzzle. It felt unkind to treat her friends almost as pieces, but it had to be done. She watched the pieces begin to slide into place, giving them a nudge where she could, where they needed it. And she dreamed of things that had been, that were, that would be, and she smiled. None of it would come to pass as they thought. She was here to make sure of that.

Dark clouds rolled in as present became future, but she did not falter. She simply watched the stars, beckoning and then welcoming the light to return with open arms. It was not the light they were all looking for, but it was important, it would do. She would bring it forth, bring it home, help it to restore what had been lost.

She stood steadfast, and all were none the wiser. Unsuspecting of a frail little girl, one no one had grasped the nature of. She was an optical illusion; looking empty from most angles, but overflowing from a true view. Overfull and empty, just as much a conundrum as the castle she came from, just as much an oxymoron as the things she drew from; that thing for which she served as proxy.

Naminé presided over the present with watchful eye, in absence of anyone else to do so. It wasn’t something she always did, not something that consumed every waking moment, more of a hobby that only ever felt right to be occupying. She didn’t slip away into the light or the shadows, but rather hidden in the void between, sitting to watch it all unfold, chains breaking and binding back together, pieces moving, strings pulling. She was not a player, not a participant, but a hidden overseer. Her influence now wasn’t much more than a small push, that nudge in the right direction, but that was all that was needed. As long as she could slip into the game unseen, unnoticed, only for a moment. Out of sight, out of mind, (out of gaze).

While the others marched on, unseeing or otherwise, Naminé smiled as she saw a piece reappear, where it should’ve been out of range for this game. But not too far to be out of range where it was needed. And certainly not for her. Oh, not for her.

 

—And for another, for someone far away, for the one who mattered maybe the most of all, it was none of this. There was no earth-shattering change, no inexplicable shift, no great realization. There were simply missing pieces, new and old, maybe not even all his, ones he knew he should be more concerned about. But there was no fantastic push, nothing magically restored.

No, instead, there was simply something strangely familiar, in a comforting way. A boy, one with eyes he was sure he’d seen before, somewhere he couldn’t place. He seemed to be missing something too, maybe not memory, maybe something different, but something even this one could notice but once again couldn’t place.

He was familiar in what felt like a thousand different directions, and how or why that was, he couldn’t say.

He was hit with an undeniable wave of déjà vu when the two of them first stumbled into each other, both vaguely desperate and more than a little awkward. He drowned in it when the boy held out his hand with a smile that was somehow still magnetic amid the chaos.

“Nice to meet you! I’m—”

  


* * *

  
  


…And somewhere, far away, but maybe not far enough, long asleep eyes finally cracked open, blinking harshly at the first light they had seen in years. Too many years. Hands grasped as they reached, reached, reached, and they saw they were different than they had been before. How long had it been now?

The light was too bright, too harsh, and it took a few minutes too long of a delay for a hand to come up and hold its place in blocking out that harsh brightness.

They remembered now, where they hadn’t before, the last time. It had been so long, since the light had been anything but too harsh on eyes built for the dark.

It was time. It was finally time. Light had expired and darkness prevailed; the past lay forgotten, the present divided, with only the future left to play it’s hand.

There was a scoff as bones creaked into place, finally standing up straight, rolling eyes at the sight of a now-familiar smirking figure. It opened his mouth, and they turned away; there was no need to hear it, no need to even see, not when one could feel the pieces beckoning, no matter how far they lay. But still alive. Somehow, still alive.

Did they really think they could play a game against the future and win? Against all odds, when they had only survived this far by chance, when their pieces should have rightfully been long ago discarded? Only time and fate could tell, and this one intended to answer to neither.

**Author's Note:**

> okay so really fun heads up here at the end. essentially this is some kinda cryptic kh or really, more specifically, khux related hot takes that i Love and actually seem like something that could happen, combined with some decently vague kh theories that i don't think are actually that likely but meshed well with what i had going on for the purposes of this thing


End file.
